When it comes to cyberattacks, small businesses are often collateral damage

How can small businesses can protect their assets from becoming collateral damage in a cyberattack?

Large enterprises and international corporations are shining targets for hackers to gaze upon. From industrial espionage to ransomware, data theft is the obvious jackpot for the majority of malicious parties.

While much attention is paid to enterprise threats and risk management, there is little spoken about the risks to the thousands of small companies surrounding the locations of big corporations. This is extremely problematic when considering that many small and mid-sized businesses are now at risk of cyberattack simply by being geographically situated close to a Fortune 500.

Collateral damage is a term most often used to describe unintentional damage inflicted on an unintended target during war. Today, the phrase has real-world implications outside of physical combat. In fact, collateral damage in the cybersecurity industry defines situations in which malicious characters take aim at a big target (i.e. an enterprise), and incidentally find that while the main target is difficult to infiltrate, the smaller companies surrounding it are easy prey to breach. Ironic, because from an attackers’ perspective, there is no such thing as an unintended target, as all outcomes are considered an intended opportunity.